I write essays to clear my mind. I write fiction to open my heart.

As a writer, one is obliged to release her words, to let them live in the world on their own.

As a novelist, I ask of myself only that I tell the truth and that I tell it beautifully.

Every Christmas, all around Ghana, there are tons of these parties and they are full of everything that exists in human life in Ghana and worldwide.

So often, literature about African people is conflated with literature about African politics, as if the state were somehow of greater import or interest than the individual.

The summer I finished my first novel Ghana Must Go, I drove across west Africa: from Accra to Lomé to Cotonou to the deliciously named Ouagadougou.

I wouldn't mind my book being called an African novel if it didn't invite lazy readings.

Being a twin, and being my sister's twin, is such a defining part of my life that I wouldn't know how to be who I am, including a writer, without that being somehow at the centre.

The writer presents himself to the blank page not with an open passport but an open heart.

I'm not sure where I'm from! I was born in London. My father's from Ghana but lives in Saudi Arabia. My mother's Nigerian but lives in Ghana. I grew up in Boston.

How can I come from a nation? How can a human being come from a concept?

Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.

If one's different, one's bound to be lonely.

A tear cringed off his cheek and stained her writing on the paper. He didn’t wipe it, men must be honest and transparent, they should never wipe their tears.

I think if a story has a message it should be incidental and accidental, otherwise it leans too close to indoctrination.

Whatever hysteria exists is inflamed by mystery, suspicion and secrecy. Hard and exact facts will cool it.

Democracy is not the end product, but the means to the end, which is the enjoyment of human rights by all.

Sorrow like a ceaseless rain Beats upon my heart. People twist and scream in pain-- Dawn will find them still again; This has neither wax nor wane, Neither stop nor start.

All that I can say about Owen Hart, is that I hope that I can be, as good a man as him, so that I can see him again, someday.

It's a terrible thing for a book, when you feel like you're supposed to like it.

I haven't been the kind of writer about whom book-length academic studies have been written.